We need to understand what we have now, what we need to have and how to move towards the desired state. This means that first of all we need to assess how much of each ingredient we currently have in our horse mixing bowl. How calm is he? How much share of his mind do I have? How connected and coordinated is his movement?
The horse does the work in riding; the rider develops him so that the work becomes easier. By training his mind and his body, she helps him to understand what she requires, she builds his strength and flexibility and she stays out of his way and lets him get on with it.
To calm and relax him we have to build his trust in us. We engage his brain and, focus it on us and his work, rather than the scarey monster in the corner of the school, or his friends in the field. We must arrange his body, as we have ours, so that his back is aligned and strong, his pelvis is engaged and his limbs are free. Before all of this, though, we have to calm, concentrate and collect ourselves to a greater degree than the horse. This is a guiding principle in all our work with the horse – be first what you want your horse to be.
Naturally there are different degrees of calmness, concentration and collection necessary for different activities. For example, lower degrees are required for hacking than for Grand Prix dressage. But there will always be instances where the hacker will need all the C’s of the Grand Prix rider, for example, when a bus is approaching and the horses in the field to your left are playing tag, and vice versa.
We know we are achieving our goal when the connection we have with the horse gets stronger.
How can we influence the level of these ingredients in the horse? We can use our Systems Thinking to understand what helps and what hinders each ingredient.
Let’s start with calmness.
What affects your horse’s calmness?
Some things I have found to have an impact are:
-My calmness
-Spookiness of environment
-Wind speed
-Familiarity with the work
-Difficulty of the work
-Horse’s confidence that “he is doing it right”
-Consistency of the approach
-Time since the horse was last ridden
-Time horse has spent in field
-…the list goes on.
How does each of these variables affect calmness?
What other variables do they affect?
All of these things are “chicken and egg”…they are mutually reinforcing. So, the calmer I am, the calmer my horse is likely to be, and the calmer my horse is, the calmer I will be. And vice versa. The source of increasing calmness or increasing anxiety (tension) is the same reinforcing loop. We choose to ride the horse, so first and foremost we have a duty to be calm.
Note that the less calm the horse, the more need for the rider to be calm, in order to avoid reinforcing the horse’s anxiety.
Figure 14 R loop Calmness
After we have become sufficiently calm, we must help our horse to be calm. If he is already calm we can commence with simple easy work looking after the rhythm and speed. If he is anxious, we must ensure we don’t reinforce this anxiety. We can help him to calm him by giving him other things to focus on, such as more difficult movements.
It is good to lunge our horse before we ride him. In this way we get to assess his ingredients before we burden him with our weight.
What about concentration? What affects that?
Some examples include:
-Rider concentration
-Spookiness of environment
-Familiarity of the work (Note that here the effect is in the opposite direction. That is to say, familiarity reinforces calmness but perhaps decreases attention, as the horse doesn’t have to concentrate so much if he finds the work easy)
-Something to pay attention to – movements, transitions etc
When I have the connection I desire it feels like the horse is seeking to carry me. He feels comfortable and easy to sit on. His back feels strong under me – seeking contact with the whole of my seat. His sides feel pushed out seeking contact with my legs. His neck and ears stretch away from me and he seeks a gentle contact with my hand via the reins. When the mix of ingredients is right all horses do this.
Figure 15 Reinforcing (R) loop connection and communication
Things to remember
To create a strong system we must strengthen the connections.
Connection is something we feel.
The rider’s role is to unblock not to block.
The key rider ingredients are calmness, concentration and connectedness.
The key horse ingredients are calmness, concentration and connectedness.
The rider must control her own ingredients before she can influence those of her horse.